The Great Danes of the University of Albany will travel down route 287 to eventually arrive at Rappolt Field on Sunday for a 2 pm exhibition game. As a very successful program, coach Phil Sykes usually carries a very lean roster and Sunday will be no exception. The roster has 19 on it consisting of 8 freshman, 3 sophomores, 4 juniors and 4 seniors. They have experience in the cage with the return of senior Sheriden Messier who had a 66.7 save percentage.
It is apparent their scoring strategy is to collect penalty corners. They had 60 penalty corners last spring and gave up only 32. They did manage an average 10.5 shots on goal vs 6.5 for their opponents. They turned their shots into 13 goals but did give up 16 on the way to a 5-5 record last spring and 4-4 in the American East Conference.
Albany was picked to finish 3rd in the American East Conference behind Monmouth and Maine. They intend to open up with Colgate in several weeks.
The Leopards look forward to another good game on the way to their August 27 open with Hofstra. Should be an interesting Sunday!!
The Lafayette field hockey team will climb into their vehicle on Thursday for a 1 pm meeting. It will be the first competition of the fall season, albeit an exhibition game. The Delaware Blue Hens were the winners of CAA tournament and went to the NCAA tournament, only to lose in the first round to Northwestern 1-4. On the way to the tournament they accumulated a 6-4 record with numerous post season award winners and gaining a wealth of experience along the way.
Femke Strien will need to be marked
They are picked to finish second in the CAA and the game with Lafayette is their only preseason contest. However, there is a lot experience returning to a fall with none more important than graduate student Femke Strien from the Netherlands a second team all-American ( number 21). She was also named pre-season player of the year. JMU is the team picked to win it all.
Looking over Delaware’s schedule, it is sprinkled with ranked teams. Princeton, Harvard, American, ODU, JMU and others are highlighted in their very aggressive 18 game schedule.
Lafayette will be playing a second preseason game with Albany on Sunday. For we fans, we will see a very skilled team that has yet to play together. I will be looking at our ability to counter attack and how many good shots we can get off during the afternoon!!
Audrey Sawers is returning for her fifth year and will be the leader on the field. However, Simone Hefting, Sydney Woolston, and Molly McAndrew will provide experience and skill for the Leopards.
The sun was barely breaking the horizon, when my wife and I decided to climb into the family chariot, and drive to Easton. We were assuming Coach Stone would beat the heat, and begin practice around 8 am. We guessed right, and the team was already on the field “warming up” under the already 75 degree heat when we arrived.
After about 10 minutes of stretching, jumping and whatever else the trainer had them do, they came to the sideline to pose and greet us. The picture is mounted here for your pleasure. and as you can see all are in fine fettle anxious to begin. They are keeping in mind that in one week, they will have their first challenge against the University of Delaware.
They did a series of sprints and we tried to keep tab on the fastest players. Not surprisingly, Sydney Woolston and Alex Talkow consistently had the after jets on as soon as the whistle blew. Although I don’t usually pick out individuals at preseason practice, it’s nice to see the all around intensity on the field. After coming together as unit, this team could be very deep and the coaches will be pleased with options the team will present during this fall!!
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The presence of Audrey Sawers on the field is also a plus for this team, of which one half have yet to play a Division one game. I am confident the mix of experience for this team will be less of an issue as we approach Patriot League play. More about that in later blogs.
In the meantime it was great to be in the stands this morning, and gives us confidence we are really going to see a real season!!! It may even be an exceptional one!!
Madison Maguire and Ashley Mendonca Add Wealth Of International and National Experience
Madison Maguire will add a wealth of offensive experience. She recently has been playing with the US national team as a striker receiving 5 caps in the process during NIH play!! The Rumson N.J. native earned her collegiate accolades at the University of Maryland. In 2019 she was named the Big Ten Preseason Team and named offensive player of the week. She was also Big Ten all academic Team, all NFHCA Mid Lantic Region, and played on the the Maryland Big Ten championship team as they became the NCAA runner up!! She was named all American in 2019 and was the Maryland team Captain scoring 34 points with 12 goals and 10 assists! She had two appearances in the National Championships while at Maryland.
Her favorite sports quote is from Derek Jeter, ” There may be people who have more talent than you, but there is no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.” And I believe that.
I hope every Leopard repeats that every day!!!
Ashley Mendonca comes by way of the University of New Hampshire and was an all NFHCA northeast region selection. More recently she served as a graduate assistant coach at Springfield College in Massachusetts.
At New Hampshire she was also on the American East all championship team and all rookie team. She was also a member of the U21 Canadian National team from 2010 -2017 and qualified for the Pan American Cup in 2016.
As captain of the Wildcats in her senior year and a key defensive player she had career goals of 16 and 14 assists and an impressive 8 defensive saves. Looking at her stats, I believe she was key member of the offensive corner unit where she led the team in shots!!
The two will meet the 2021 fall Leopard squad on August 10 after which they will. begin preparing for the fall season. The first scrimmage will be at the University of Delaware on August the 19th.
The fall schedule was posted on twitter but with a couple of changes needed. It was incorrectly reported that Lafayette will play 20 games. ( The article incorrectly reported the first two scrimmages with Delaware and Albany as official games). However here are schools and dates for games as reported.
The two scrimmages are Aug 19 and 22. Delaware will be away at 1pm and Albany at home reportedly at 2 pm. The first official game will be home August 27th with Hofstra @ 4pm, followed by an August home contest with Villanova on the 29th@ 3pm. Then, the following weekend will be the first two games away with Big Ten opponents, Ohio State on September 3rd @. 4pm and Indiana on September 5th @11 am. The Leopards will return home on September 10th to host Yale in a game under the lights @7 pm. They will then hop to a bus to travel to Quinipiac on Sept 12th for a 1 pm game.
The first Patriot League game will be with the likely Patriot League favorite American University in DC on September 18th @12 pm. The Leopards went to overtime in both games with American this past spring including a controversial call in the second game which led to a game winning stroke. The Patriot League schedule continues the following weekend at home against Holy Cross on September 25 @noon. Lafayette will stay at home for the next two games on October 2 and 3rd against Colgate @ 11 am and Fairfield @2pm respectively.
Eva Kaplan sends a pass downfield
The next week the Leopards will again hit the road against Boston University on Oct 9th@ 12 pm and Brown Oct 10th @ 1 pm. The following friday, Oct 15th @7 pm will see the Nittany Lions of Penn State at Rappolt field, followed by Drexel on Sunday October 17 @ 1pm. The Patriot League schedule resumes with a game against arch rival Lehigh on Friday October 22nd in a game under the lights. @ 7pm. Temple will host the Leopards on Sunday Oct 24th @1 pm.
The Patriot League final regular season game will be marked by a visit by the spring league champion Bucknell on Oct 30th @12 pm quickly followed by a visit to Piscataway for a game with the fourth Big Ten rival Rutgers @2 pm.
This is an ambitious schedule which if successfully navigated could certainly lead to at least a top 20 ranking. A Patriot League championship by winning the Patriot League tournament would amount to an automatic slot in the NCAA national tournament.
Audrey Sawers will be back to challenge Patriot League foes
One half of the Leopards had an intense spring game experience, the other half which includes a very talented freshman class will have not played a single division one game. The early games will be good experience and preparation for the latter part of the season. Audrey Sawers will be returning for her covid season bonus and should be a key leader on a team that saw each game played this spring to one goal margins as well as a number of overtime games.
American will return two for their bonus season and Lehigh will return two as well. Grace Angelella will be playing for Temple, a late season game as she will studying for a masters degree at the Philadelphia school. In addition, Teressa Delahanty a Lafayette graduate from several year ago will be a volunteer coach at Drexel.
NIL Starts To Kick In
Lehigh University softball player Carley Barjaktarovich has signed an endorsement deal with the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the minor league team. The July 22 theme night will feature a paid appearance at the Iron Pigs game. Last Monday the Iron Pigs announced that she has signed an endorsement deal. The Iron Pigs say it is the first professional sport deal since the NCAA decision to allow college athletes to accept endorsements for the use of their name, image and likeness while still competing for their school. Terms were not disclosed. Under Pennsylvania law, schools and leagues cannot sanction college athletes for deals like this.
Meanwhile Erin Matson who plays for UNC has reported that she has signed a deal with Longstreath and other equipment companies for an undisclosed amount of money.
PS. I have just learned the game with Indiana will be at Ohio State in Columbus!!
It’s only six weeks away, as coaches are preparing for a “normal” fall, where they will be returning to seasons dealing with restructuring, and building their teams for a run at championships. Players, fans, and parents are trying to adjust fall schedules to be in attendance, to watch any number of sports. Student athletes will eventually be back to live classrooms and hopefully leaving the words like “zoom” behind them. In one and one half months bags will be packed and delivered to new dorm rooms. and college athletes will step on the field with their teammates. As the time approaches, all should all be increasing their off season training. Coach Stone believes in a fit squad, and quite logically the task of molding a squad that plays better as group than as individuals, can’t begin with a team more concerned about their next breath than their next pass, shot or defensive assignment.
Emma Garvey and Mary Gould of Lafayette stop Bison attack at the goal
The past year has brought new changes as well. Lafayette will have a new president who will no doubt have her own idea about structure. By all accounts she and her spouse are committed fans of college athletics, given their experiences at Notre Dame, Virginia and UNC. In the world of NCAA athletics, it’s interesting how change that was unneeded or unwise has force schools and institutions back to the middle. Many schools, who had tried to drop sports, have now reversed their decisions. William and Mary not only reversed their decision to drop sports, but fired their AD and hired new talent. Stanford, who only 9 months ago decided to drop field hockey altogether will welcome Roz Ellis as their new coach. The Ivy League lost the chance to retain seniors who were deprived of their final season. They will see their graduates play somewhere else. Juliana Tornetta having graduated from Princeton, as an all american and now a member of the US Team, will play at Maryland this year! The Patriot League is preparing to deal with NIL and perhaps they have finally given up their aspiration to be “Ivy Light.” The Ivy League certainly did not demonstrate any superiority of management last year. .
Leopards get ready in Maroon Club weight training center!!
The NCAA is managing itself to irrelevance, as they seem stuck to managing minutia, as opposed to dealing with real problems. Their efforts seemed limited to changing small elements of the language in their regulations than addressing real problems.
Hopefully, Lafayette will emerge stronger, chastened by over zealous administration of rules, but keeping what is good. I expect athletics will emerge stronger as Intercollegiate Athletics gets new attention, starting with a change in the reporting structure. All indications seem to be moving in that direction.
A traffic jam in front of the Lafayette goal
I am ready to get down to the nitty gritty of fall competition. Lafayette will soon have on campus one of their most talented classes ever. Certainly it can be said individually, they can be as competitive with any team in the league. The question is repeated here, How will they mold together as a team?.
With many teams returning players for additional seasons, it will be challenging. Audrey Sawers the Lafayette captain, will be returning for her senior plus season and will be a threat to Patriot League foes. But Lehigh will return Lenke Havas and Drew Pecora, and American will return Noor Coenen and Gaby De Kock.
The League will be improved, and perhaps a better performance in out of conference games will get the League a better seed in the NCAA tournament. Bucknell’s performance in the national tournament certainly helped. Schedule’s are being finalized and Colgate already has reported a schedule that includes Albany in August. a late game with Syracuse. and two games with Cornell. Lafayette will host Colgate on Oct 2 at Rappolt Field. By my count, having reported only 15 games Colgate will have room for more games. There are reports that Lafayette will be playing Yale on Sept 10 also at Rappolt.
I will be interested in those early games and scrimmages, as experience must be gained. There will be 10 players for Lafayette who have never played in a Division one game. All manner of challenges, as the season approaches and certainly fodder for us fans!!
What is NIL And What It Means To The Student Athlete
NIL, ( the student athlete’s rights to their name, image and likeness) is working it’s way through the courts as colleges, the NCAA, and conferences are beginning to get a handle on its implications. Until this point colleges, but not student athletes could profit from selling the rights to NIL to third party vendors like gaming companies. However, the athletes themselves have been prevented through archaic rules promulgated by the NCAA from benefiting from the licensing of their NIL.
Athletes in particular are not permitted to benefit in anyway from outside sources. It could be as insignificant as a four dollar picture frame to thousands of dollars in endorsements. These rules were particularly discriminatory to the student athlete. Was Yo Yo Ma the famous cello player required to forgo compensation while attending Harvard, or even been required to be regulated by the administration at Harvard on his musical gigs?!
The NFL and MLB Players Associations receive approximately 120 million dollars from licensing deals from video game publishers. This equates to about $48000 dollars per player each year. Last year Electronic Arts agreed to pay 40 million dollars to more than 29,000 current and former collegiate student athletes for the rights to use their name or likeness. There is also revenue potential in apparel deals.
By one estimate the UCLA women’s gymnastic team alone could be worth as much as $1,250,000 annually in endorsement revenue, Many current Gen Z high school athletes are bringing along a following in social media. even before they arrive on campus. I have personally seen, in the sport of Field Hockey, that USA field hockey as part of their “grow the game strategy,” has looked at early experiments in video gaming.
To meet this challenge the Patriot League in a pioneering move have entered into an innovating partnership with INFLCR to “empower conference-member student athletes to share content and manage student-athlete NIL activities.” The Patriot League is the first NCAA Division One conference to provide league wide support for its members. The league officials stated,” By providing each Patriot League institution with a department-wide INFLCR solution, the conference is leading from the front and empowering all Patriot League student-athletes to grow their brands and educate themselves on the new opportunities that are coming soon from NIL.”
Lafayette fans feeling it !!!
By sharing photos, videos, and graphics produced by member institutions, delivered by INFLCR software enables each student athlete the opportunity to share their story and grow their brand. INFCR software will provide transaction monitoring for student athlete’s commercial activity, that happens through INFLCR vetted companies. In addition, student athletes will have access to educational video resources, which will provide ongoing NIL and brand strategy content from a variety of athletes and industry experts, according to League officials.
Kudos to the League and its respective members to be ready for this development!!!
Mark Emmert president of the NCAA called off all NCAA fall championships, which left the FBS intact, the one the NCAA has made out of reach. Most of these schools are clinging with dogged determination to keep football playing this fall, along with other sports. Emmert climbed out of his bunker to declare the fall season over for most schools and set off a battle between the large power 5 schools and the rest of college athletics.
Emmert is clearly trying to pressure the remaining conferences to give in and play their championships in the spring. The remaining six football conferences are clearly up against the wall but it sets up a showdown between the NCAA who usually bows to the large conferences and all the rest of college athletics.
Sports Illustrated reports one Group of 5 AD said, ” Does the fall proceed with only six FBS conferences playing football and no one else doing anything.” The dynamic has changed this fall with many sports reaching less than 50% playing the many other sports and therefore triggering cancelling all fall championship tournaments. Is Karen Shelton at UNC going to be content to play 6 or 7 games and be ineligible to play for a national championship?
It was the Big Ten move and Pac 12 move that reduced the leverage of the remaining conferences. ” Among our frustrations with the NCAA is that they keep making announcements like this, without having first decided the myriad of associated issues involving eligibility, scholarship limits, competition season, roster size, etc ” said one Power 5 AD. These are all legitimate issues and issues that have not been addressed by conferences like the Patriot League leaving many student athletes in limbo!!
The NCAA is not without fault neither is the Patriot League. These are important issues which ultimately go to credibility. IF THEY ARE SERIOUS ABOUT A SPRING SEASON ( THE LAST CHANCE FOR MANY ATHLETES TO PLAY THIS ACADEMIC YEAR ) THEY SHOULD BE SPENDING THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS SOLVING THESE PROBLEMS.
As many of you already know, I am not a great fan of the NCAA, for the main reason they have closed their eyes to the larger issues in college sports and chosen to encourage enforcement of a plethora of ridiculous minor violations ( like five dollar gift prohibitions to former athletes). The members schools of the NCAA have gone along with this and bear some responsibility for the current situation.
I do not believe the NCAA should go away, but be a better regulatory organization focusing on the “big stuff.” That takes engagement by the president’s of the colleges and universities. We should be returning to sport, not politics, power and egotism. We should be encouraging the lessons of athletics which are learned best on the playing field than in back room deals by interested combines. Sports has become entwined in other efforts recently, perhaps we all should take deep breath and decide how we get our student athletes back on the field! Full Stop!!
It was reported that on January 10th 49 BCE Suetonis said to Julius Caesar, “Icata Alea Est,” as he led is forces across the Rubicon in northern Italy in defiance of the Senate. There is nothing that can stop the inevitable. Similarly, the Big Ten athletic conference deferred all fall sports to the spring, making almost all Olympic Sports, in particular Field Hockey, fall short of the 50% guideline for a NCAA championship season.
As I had opined last Friday, the action by the Mid American Conference moved Division one field hockey into failing to get the needed 39 to stage an NCAA Field Hockey Championship. The move by the Big Ten assures that Field Hockey will have enough competitions in the spring ( should they play) to stage that tournament.
The one remaining field hockey playing conference to go, is the ACC, which is being held hostage by Football, along with several other power five conferences are insisting on playing this fall. In the case of field hockey, who will the ACC be playing?? No doubt each other, and will that make them ineligible for a spring NCAA championship?? At the moment, they are being held prisoner by their football playing brethren.
The NCAA has almost made their leadership ineffective, as they played no role in the Big Ten ( and Pac 12) action. Some Ivy League schools may still not have enough student athletes to field a team so the moves yesterday made it more likely the 39 team limit could be met this spring.
My hope is Lafayette has begun planning for the spring, to allow the next phase to happen. As it stands now, there will be about 700 students on campus this fall. There are 4-5 months now to plan and insure that the spring population is sufficient to resume all activities. GO PARDS!!
The mid American Conference of which the field hockey playing schools are Appalachian State, Ball State, Kent State, Miami, Ohio, Central Michigan, and Longwood, announced the canceling of all fall sports!! These seven schools will bring the number of schools not playing this fall to 40 assuming Louisville will return after their quarantine. Since there are 78 Division one schools and the NCAA has stated if more that 50% if the eligible schools don’t play, there will be no NCAA championship this fall.
In my opinion, all the remaining schools should bag the fall season and play a full series of games this spring. It solves a lot of eligibility issues and gives time to reschedule 16 or 18 games, in other words a full season!!!
In this crazy season that might be too logical to happen….but maybe!!!
Madison Maguire will add a wealth of offensive experience. She recently has been playing with the US national team as a striker receiving 5 caps in the process during NIH play!! The Rumson N.J. native earned her collegiate accolades at the University of Maryland. In 2019 she was named the Big Ten Preseason Team and named offensive player of the week. She was also Big Ten all academic Team, all NFHCA Mid Lantic Region, and played on the the Maryland Big Ten championship team as they became the NCAA runner up!! She was named all American in 2019 and was the Maryland team Captain scoring 34 points with 12 goals and 10 assists! She had two appearances in the National Championships while at Maryland.
Lafayette College Field Hockey 